The Event Ticketing RFP: 40 Questions That Predict Platform Fit

Why feature-list RFPs pick the wrong platform

The cost of a wrong pick arrives after signature. When Oasis tickets went on sale in August 2024, fans met error messages and hours-long queues while more than 1 million tickets sold out in a day. The UK's national fraud reporting centre, Action Fraud, recorded £9.7 million lost to ticket fraud in 2024. A feature list predicts none of that. Failure behavior does. The RFP is the one moment a vendor answers in writing, on the record.

How should you structure an event ticketing RFP?

Structure the document in five parts: a context pack, the question bank, two scenario walkthroughs, a published scoring model, and a proof stage. Vendors write sharper answers when they know how they are judged.

• Context pack: annual event calendar, ticket volumes, peak on-sale history, venues, channels, pain points.
• Question bank: the 40 questions below, answered in writing.
• Scenario walkthroughs: your hardest on-sale and your busiest gate. Vendors respond step by step.
• Scoring model: weights published inside the RFP itself.
• Proof stage: shortlist demos scripted by you, a load test, and reference calls with operators your size.

What questions should an event ticketing RFP include?

Copy the 40 questions below into your document. Each is written so a weak platform cannot answer it with marketing language.

1. Commercial model

• Which revenue model applies to our event mix: flat fee per ticket, percentage, hybrid, or license, and what changes it?
• Which fees does the buyer see at checkout, and which do we absorb?
• What triggers repricing during the term: volume bands, added channels, new event types, renewal?
• Which items cost extra: seat maps, scanners, on-site staff, API access, sandbox environments?

2. Fees and settlement

• When do we receive funds: daily, weekly, or post-event, and who holds them until then?
• Walk us through a real settlement report line by line: gross, net, refunds, chargebacks.
• Who carries chargeback liability and refund processing cost, per case?
• What happens to held funds if an event is cancelled or postponed?

3. On-sale capacity and load

• What was your largest on-sale in the last 12 months: peak requests per minute, tickets sold in the first hour, error rate?
• How does the queue behave at ten times forecast demand: waiting room logic, bot filtering, session fairness?
• What degrades first under overload, and what does the buyer see when it does?
• Will you run a load test against our demand profile before contract signature?

4. Access control and entry operations

Entry is where platform failure becomes public. Pair these questions with our stadium entry operations playbook and ask how the vendor's on-ground operations work on event day.

• How many scans per minute per gate did your hardware sustain at your last stadium-scale event?
• What happens at the gate when connectivity drops: offline validation, sync-back, duplicate handling?
• How do rotating or delayed barcodes work for high-risk events, and what do they cost?
• Who staffs, trains, and supervises the entry team: you, us, or a third party?

5. Fraud and resale controls

Resale is a policy decision before it is a technology decision. Our ticket resale control framework sets the rules these questions test.

• What share of transactions did your fraud screening block last season, and what was the false-positive rate?
• Which resale rules can we set per event: price caps, named transfer, approved resale windows?
• How do you detect and cancel tickets bought by bots or listed on unauthorized secondary sites?
• Which identity checks apply at purchase and at the gate for high-risk fixtures?

6. Data ownership and reporting

Settle who owns your ticketing data before you sign, not at exit.

• Who owns buyer records, and in what format and frequency can we export them, during and after the contract?
• Which data leaves with us at contract end, and what do you retain and for what purpose?
• What does our team see live during an on-sale: sales by channel, price type, geography, refund flow?
• Do you use our buyer data to market other organizers' events, and can we switch that off?

7. Marketing and distribution

• Which distribution channels are in scope for our events, and how many active buyers does each reach?
• Which audience tools are included: segmentation, CRM sync, abandoned-checkout recovery?
• How do co-marketing placements work, and who approves creative and pricing?
• Which attribution reporting proves which channel sold which ticket?

8. Support and SLAs

• What is the guaranteed response time during a live on-sale versus a normal business day?
• Who is on site on event day, and what is the escalation path in minute one of a gate failure?
• Which languages and time zones does support cover, at which tiers?
• Which service credits apply when an SLA is missed?

9. Implementation and migration

• What is the realistic timeline from signature to first on-sale for an operation our size?
• How do you migrate historical buyer data, season tickets, and live events from our current platform?
• Who trains our box office, marketing, and finance teams, and for how long?
• Which comparable customers went live in the last 12 months and will take a reference call?

10. Security and compliance

• Which certifications are current, with dated evidence: PCI DSS level, ISO 27001, SOC 2?
• How do you comply with data-protection law in every market we sell into?
• When was your last independent penetration test, and how were the findings resolved?
• What is your disclosure timeline when an incident touches our buyer data?

Which vendor answers are red flags?

Averages instead of peaks, features instead of behavior, and silence on exit terms. Each of the following should cost points. Some should end the conversation.

• Uptime quoted as an annual average, with no peak on-sale numbers.
• We have never had an outage. Every platform has. You want the recovery story.
• Data export described as available on request, with no format, timeline, or fee.
• Chargeback and cancellation liability answered with it depends, without a liability table.
• A load test refused, or offered only after signature.
• Settlement timing answered with a marketing phrase instead of a calendar.

How should you score and weight RFP responses?

Score every answer 0 to 3 on evidence, not on promise: 0 for no answer or marketing language, 1 for a claim without evidence, 2 for evidence, 3 for evidence plus a named reference you can call.

Weight by exposure. An on-sale-heavy promoter might put 35 percent on capacity plus fraud and resale. A venue running daily attractions moves that weight to entry operations and support. Keep total cost at 20 to 30 percent everywhere. Then set disqualifiers that no score can offset: no data export commitment, no chargeback liability table, no load test.

What are the most common ticketing RFP mistakes?

Five mistakes account for most bad outcomes. All are avoidable at drafting stage.

• Inviting eight vendors. Three to five allows real verification of every answer.
• Letting the vendor's demo script replace your scenarios. Make them run yours.
• Weighting price above 30 percent. The expensive failure is the on-sale that crashes, not the fee.
• Skipping reference calls with an operator your size in your region.
• Leaving exit terms untested. The data and migration questions are your insurance policy.

What does proof look like in practice?

When webook.com answers these same 40 questions, the evidence is operational: 40M+ tickets sold, 18M+ users, buyers across 180+ countries, and 50+ distribution channels. webook.com is the official ticketing platform of Riyadh Season for the fourth consecutive year in 2025 and of the Saudi Pro League, and it expanded into Europe through the SmartMove acquisition. Figures verified as of September 2026. Hold every vendor, us included, to the same standard: numbers, named events, dates, not adjectives.

Put the questions to a platform that answers in numbers

Send this RFP as it stands. Then put it in front of the webook.com commercial team and ask for the evidence, not the brochure.

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